Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Beto O'Rourke came to San Antonio with the message which is differentiating him from most other candidates in the 2018 elections, Democrat and Republican---a call for the legalization of marijuana, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
At a town hall meeting on the city's east side, O'Rourke was asked about the case of Alexis Bortell.
The 12 year old girl is a 'marijuana refugee,' forced to leave her home in Texas for Colorado, so she can receive marijuana to treat her epilepsy.
Alexis and her family are suing the federal government, arguing Texas laws prohibiting the medical use of marijuana in all but the most narrowly drawn cases, which don't include Alexis, illegally restricts her right to 'travel with medicine.'
O'Rourke says its time that this argument come to an end.
"It is a much better way to control its sale, rather than allowing it to be purchased on the same black market, where those same drug dealers are selling cocaine and heroin," he said.
O'Rourke says growing up in El Paso, across the border from Juarez, the epicenter of Mexico's narco wars, has shown him clearly how worthless the 'War on Drugs' has been.
"We have seen in those states that have allowed adults to purchase marijuana for their own personal use that the sky has not fallen, and crime has not risen," he said.
That argument is at the center of the Bortell family's case. They say since marijuana is legal as a medicine in Colorado, it is a violation of the Commerce Clause of the Constitution for Texas to deny her the right to bring her medicine into Texas, any more than it would be constitutional for one state to prevent people from bringing in aspirin.
Texas has routinely rejected any attempt to expand the legalization of marijuana any beyond the current law, which allows only cannabis oil, not marijuana itself, and only for treatment of one specific seizure disorder. Gov. Abbott has long vowed to veto any attempt to expand the state's marijuana laws.
PHOTO: BETO O'ROURKE CAMPAIGN